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Hi, I’m feeling very discouraged. Last summer I covered my entire allotment with polythene and tarpaulins, some with cardboard underneath and some without. I have dug part of the allotment but realised quickly that I couldn’t sustain this because it’s bloody hard work. I’m really enthusiastic about no dig but when I peeled back the tarps there was a mass of thick healthy bindweed roots. It’s spring now and I have lots of things ready to go in the ground, what should be my next step? also, my allotment is rather big and I don’t have funds for masses and masses of compost to cover it all in, hence the cardboard. Please help I’m very disappointed and am started to lose my enthusiasm with it all. Bloody bindweed! Many thanks, Alice
Alice take heart.
Nobody has cleared bindweed in half a year and it sounds like you have a lot.
In my first year here I used a trowel frequently to keep removing it. Two years of that, is worth it in the end, crops grow meanwhile.
I would pull up all the surface roots where you plan to crop now.
With more cardboard & compost if you can, but on less than half of your allotment!!! keep poly over the rest.
Less is more, crop intensively on a smaller area.Ah that is so nice to hear Alice, thanks for writing again.
You are enjoying one of the best feelings in gardening, weakening bindweed!I have rose bay willowherb here and that is driving me mad as well. In the new beds I dug what I could find out, without digging too deep because I didn’t want to disturb the soil more than I had to. What I am finding now is that it is still coming up and I pull each little ‘inside out umbrella’ up wherever I see it and hope to weaken it a bit more. I am moving out beyond the veg plot into a 6 acre field which is were the beastly stuff started from. I am clearing it as I go and putting down cardboard and tarps will go down soon too. I am wondering whether to try a trick that my cousin uses. He carries a little ex water bottle with glyphosate in it when he is in his garden and it has just a couple of pin holes in the screwtop, so he can squeeze the bottle and dab a drop of the glyphosate on any deep rooted weeds, he isn’t growing vegetables though and I would not use it where I am growing mine either. Any thoughts?
One more thing I have to tell to someone or I shall burst. I have been composting fresh-ish horse manure and used grass cuttings to the get the heap started and I got a temp of 45 c. As it cooled I turned it but no more heat and I could see that it was not going to be ready for some time. So I called on my neighbour and asked for the sweepings from her chicken houses, scattered that in thin layers with grass cuttings and layers of the heap contents to a metre high. Thank God for soil thermometers because this evening my heap stood at 63 c. They can’t burst into flames can they? 😉
Sandra, willowherb dies with mulching like other weeds. Only yours is more vigorous!
I see no reason to use that horrible poison. Not when there is so much free cardboard.
No need to turn that heap. Turning can lose heat. 63C is normal for a working heap, they can reach way more than that and not catch fire no worries.
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